I keep meaning to reply to this thread every day, but get sidetracked. I am so not meant to be a debater, heh.
@Faust: I will look up that analysis. Thank you. And I agree: Trees are good. Let's plant a lot of them and hope the Earth cooperates!
@Thought: I'll look into that book, too. Thanks.
@Syna: Interesting. From what I understand (which may be incorrect), its about neck and neck between hydrogeologists/hydrologists (groundwater/surface water geology) and oil geologists. And holy smokes, the arguments they get into with each other, heh. At least in my small neck of the woods, every single geologist I've run into is a hydrogeologist or a geophysicist who studied hydrogeology in graduate school. Of course, we also have a lot of water around here, so we're biased. ^_^
Also, I look at other scientific evidence very seriously. But I think it's a dangerous concept to say that paleoclimates are given too much weight when studying modern climate change. Like I'll indicate again below, that's like saying the events of the past are meaningless when trying to predict the future. If anything, paleoclimates are our only reliable way of knowing what habits the Earth actually has had climate-wise.
@Genesis: I will look over those studies when I've had some more rest, but at first glance, the first one doesn't strike me as very reliable. Since geophysics involves the study of the movement of the Earth and the things inside of it, I'm a bit skeptical of geophysical research in the area of atmospheric science. They are very closely related, as geology is shaped by meteorology, but... just at a quick glance, I don't see anything new there. I would wonder why a meteorologist didn't conduct that research. That's just at a glance, though, and an opinionated one at that. I could be dead wrong, and so I'll look it over more carefully. The second link, however, looks very interesting, despite being dated, and I'll dive into it more deeply tomorrow.
Also, I don't know very much about the subject of ozone layer depletion, so I'm not qualified at all to respond to that debate without serious research (and at this point, all I have available to me for research is internet science/Wikipedia stuff, which I do not put much stock in). Sorry!
A couple of important notes...
First, a personal one: I don't want to be dogmatic. I don't think mindless dogmatism solves anything, even if you're on the correct side, because you'll just be off-putting to anyone who disagrees with you. Having previously been very strongly convinced that man-made global warming was real, and admittedly having swung to the other side and been strongly convinced that man-made global warming is nonsense, now I'm sitting closer to the middle but leaning towards the "this is not man-made" side. I'm close enough to the middle that I'm not dogmatic about either approach. I look at the history of the Earth. I look at the studies that are out today. I try to interpret everything neutrally, but I am human, and will tend to interpret things based on whatever opinion I may have. I really don't want to get the wrong opinion, which, despite how anti man-made global warming I sound, I am trying very hard to be neutral. It would be easy to dig in my heels and fight tooth and nail for my opinion, but it's more important to me that I come away with the right answers than come away as the best debater.
Geologists tell a lot of things about history based on ocean transgression-regression cycles in the rocks. They happen all the time. I mean, they are literally uncountable. These ocean transgression-regression cycles are everywhere, from the shoreline to the Mojave Desert. So for us to throw a fit about the sea level rising a few feet is absolutely ridiculous, because there's absolutely no reason for us to be surprised. It's going to rise. We can't stop it. And it's going to recede. And it's going to rise again. And recede again.
@Lord J: It's interesting that you bring up the Quaternary Interglacial Maximum. It's actually one of the head-scratching points for me, and for apparently every geoscientist everywhere. There are two very vicious, opposing groups in the geosciences that argue until they're blue in the face about how to quantify recent history. Epic arguments. Arguments that have reshaped the Cenozoic time scale multiple times.
Technically, as of about a year ago the Tertiary-Quaternary time scale is outdated. So apparently we're currently living in the Holocene epoch in the Neogene Period, not the Quaternary period (and your Quaternary Interglacial Maximum has now been redefined as the Pleistocene-Holocene Interglacial Maximum, since we know the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary doesn't actually mark the end of the Ice Age as once thought... it's a few thousand years off). Unfortunately, this political divide has resulted in a bit of chaos, as several colleges have refused to adopt the new time scale and continue to teach the incorrect system. The result is that something like four different time scales are currently being taught across the United States, and those were just the ones I found. I ran into this head-banging madness last December, when trying to find some information on the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. Anyway, the fight still continues. The International Commission on Stratigraphy has revised their time scale three times since last December, and they have more debates scheduled on the matter in the coming months. Since I'm quoting stuff I last checked on over a month ago, I could be quoting the time scale incorrectly now for all I know. Sadly, this fight is politically motivated, and your side depends on whether you're a petrologist (rock/land geology) or a hydrogeologist (water geology). But I digress. That hasn't very much to do with global warming.
The point is that the Pleistocene-Holocene interglacial maxiumum is not as written in stone as it once seemed. In fact, that's one of the reasons the boundary between the Pleistocene and Holocene exists, as you probably know, because it was dated to coincided with the end of the last major Ice Age. We now know that it missed the mark by a few thousand years at least. And that pretty much all of the Holocene has been an interglacial stage for the last 11,000 years. It's like watching the Yellowstone Supervolcano. We know change is coming, because it's time... it's even overdue at this point. Will an Ice Age start this century or a thousand years from now? Will Yellowstone erupt tomorrow or wait another ten thousand years? How are we supposed to know? We're not that good at this stuff just yet. (Though, in Yellowstone's case we know we're looking at sooner rather than later, but "sooner" can be a flexible term in geoscience.)
To say that ancient climates are irrelevant to the situation at hand is saying that history can teach us nothing about the future. Just because it happened a very long time ago doesn't mean it can't happen now. To disregard the importance of paleoclimates is innocent at best, and reckless at worst. In our rush to crucify humanity as all-powerful enough to destroy the Earth, we might be ignoring the real issue, which could be that Earth is changing on it's own... just like it's done a dozen times before.
I agree with you on the long-term survival. There's nothing we can do to stop the changing of the climate over vast periods of time. The world will turn into a vast desert when the next supercontinent assembles, and nothing short of an artificial weather system can change that. Or stopping the movement of the plates (which, I've heard argued, would be catastrophic for life on Earth).
The CO2 debate is one of my big stumbling blocks... The studies that everyone relies on, the supposed "ace-in-the-hole" research has been outed in recent years for being a work of absolute fiction. So far as I know (and my knowledge is admittedly limited), there are no impartial long-term studies that show that the overall concentration of CO2 has risen so sharply as claimed. But it's been repeated so often that everyone "knows" its true.
However, that being said, geologic history does show us that that CO2 levels can dip up and down violently like a ferret tripped out on speed in the short term. (That's my scientific jargon and I'm sticking to it, heh.) I just don't know of any impartial studies that say it's happening right now. And it's long term that we'll get ourselves into real trouble. Chopping down all the trees and killing all the photosynthetic algae out there wouldn't be very helpful either.
Climate change is absolutely be a threat to the human race, whether man-made or natural. I do not dispute this at all! This is why I said in the original post that I'm anti-pollution because I'm pro-human. Whether man-made or natural, we're shooting ourselves in the foot that way. But here's the catch, and you identify it yourself: "Human life is able to thrive only within a narrow range of conditions which for much of the Earth's history have not been present." Therefore, we tend to establish the way things are now as "normal" and therefore any deviation from that must be man-made. Except... We know that for most of Earth's history, things haven't been this way, and this is actually very abnormal for Earth. As for the sharply rising CO2 levels, the melting of the ice caps... Earth has pulled this stunt a dozen times before, all without us around to instigate it. Yet, why do we ignore the possibility that this is another one of those cycles? Oh no, it must be "man made." Certainly. Because Earth is just a big, inert lump of dirt.
I'm sure the dinosaurs would have preferred that a few things went differently at the end of the Mesozoic. Yet, the severe change in climate led to the Cenozoic becoming the Age of Mammals, and eventually, to us. We are just one of many animals on this planet. We would certainly prefer that things remain as they are now, but studying paleoclimates tells us that they will not. The climate will always be changing. The continents will always be shifting. All this will happen until either the Earth's core cools down significantly more or the sun swallows the Earth when it turns into a red giant. Whichever comes first.
When I say that I'm critical of man-made global warming, I'm not arguing that climate change isn't happening. I should know as much as anyone that it is always happening, and it never, ever stops! But to me, it's dangerous for mankind to conflate one problem with another. If indeed the Earth is going through one of its periods of massively fast change, as it has done many times before, then we need to stop pretending the problem is man-made and figure out a way to protect ourselves from the changes (however we might accomplish that, I don't know). If the problem is actually man-made, we need to stop pretending its a political farce and get something done about it. Which would involve a lot of scientists sitting down at the table together and stop acting like children throwing temper tantrums.
The arrogance of man thinking that the current climate is normal and that any deviation from it is abnormal irritates me, and it detracts from solving the problem at hand. Something is happening now. Remember that Earth has wiped out 95% of all land and marine life at the end of the Paleozoic, during the Permian Mass Extinction. There were no humans around to help out. The ocean waters became stagnant and severely anoxic, and the atmosphere was overloaded with CO2 and had precious little oxygen. It was very nearly a reset button on anything that wasn't anaerobic bacteria.
I think it's vastly important to determine if we're looking at a bizarre situation like the Permian Mass Extinction, or if it is truly man-made. The solution on either side is vastly different, and it would be very detrimental to the human race to pursue the wrong answer.
Thank you for all the replies so far. Like hiddensquire indicated, I too get so, so very tired of politics, and I often avoid the global warming debate for that reason alone. Two, though I like to discuss the topic, it seems to always turn to argument, and I often don't have the energy to fend off bait and outright attacks. (I am glad that hasn't happened here yet.) Good discussion without getting upset leads to good things! ^_^
